LAX01LA259 · Cessna 172M
Sun Air Aviation Cessna 172M · Accident: loss of control in flight during landing
From Camarillo International Airport (CMA) to Placerville Airport (PVF)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX01LA259
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Completed
- API-reported fatalities
- 0 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- Unknown
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- General aviation
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Cessna 172M
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 172
- Category
- Airplane
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- N8962V
- Operator
- Sun Air Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Camarillo International Airport (CMA), Camarillo, CATo Placerville Airport (PVF), Placerville, CA
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Part 91: General Aviation
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- Landing · aborted
- First occurrenceThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- Loss of control in flight
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Stall/mush
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Airspeed(vs), not maintained
- Pilot in command › Airspeed(vso), inadequate
- Pilot in command › Distance/speed, misjudged
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Upon reaching the destination airport on a dark, nighttime cross-country flight, the pilot's approach was too high and fast, so he performed a go-around. On his second approach, the pilot was also too high, but the airplane touched down on the 4,200-foot-long runway. Concerned about being able to stop before reaching the runway's departure end, the pilot added full engine power and tried to go around. The engine power increased normally. During the initial climb out, the pilot experienced difficulty controlling the airplane. Contrary to Cessna's published recommended balked landing procedure, the pilot failed to retract the wing flaps from their 40-degrees setting. The airspeed was slow, the airplane stalled, and it impacted trees and terrain. About 1.5 months earlier, the pilot was issued a private pilot certificate. The accident occurred during the pilot's first, solo, night cross-country flight, and his total pilot-in-command night experience was 1.5 hours.
Probable cause
Inadequate airspeed during climb out following an aborted landing that was precipitated by the pilot's misjudged speed/distance on final approach. Also, contributing to the accident was the pilot's inexperience in the type of operation, his failure to properly configure the airplane's flaps for the go-around, and the dark nighttime condition.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX01LA259
- Event ID
- 20010727X01544
- Case number
- LAX01LA259
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (4)
- Unreviewed is an editorial label, not an investigation status. API-sourced is not report-checked or human-reviewed. Explicit event totals are used without summing aircraft injury tables; onboard allocation is withheld. Unknown values remain unknown. The operation category is mapped from the NTSB-reported FAR part and has not been reviewed.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: local date, investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2001-07-25.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 9a14a881f07d7a4ade9534b273b4c7dca3de8d6d6800d623053e27dc902cf6e6; retrieved 2026-09-21T19:53:44.594Z.